Mark Prisk MP, the Housing and Local Government minister, said shop owners could not ignore the increase in people doing more shopping over the internet.

Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Mr Prisk said the Government was doing all it could to help shops survive in the economic downturn.

But he warned that retailers had to change the way they did their business too, to appeal to online shoppers, which now accounts for 15 per cent of retail trade.

He said: “We want to change that and are doing everything we can to address these issues — for example, reducing business rates for small companies, strengthening local planning and encouraging councils to be more flexible with parking.”

He continued: “We will keep providing support where it is needed, but it takes more than funding to make this work.

“As consumers, our behaviour has changed. High streets need to respond to that change if they are to prosper. Online sales are now 15 per cent of the market, so high streets need to adapt to this quickly.”

Mr Prisk was writing in support of The Daily Telegraph’s Reinvent the High Street campaign to put the heart back into the traditional high street.

He called “businesses, local people and councils to work together to utilise town centres and make them viable and vibrant places once more”.

He added: “As The Daily Telegraph’s excellent Reinventing the High Street campaign shows, high streets are essential to people, but to survive in the digital age they require more support from their local community.”

Last December law firm Begbies Traynor, which specialises in corporate recovery, said that 2013 will see a rising number of high street shops facing an uncertain future, with “critical” financial issues now facing 140 retailers.

Book retailers, off licences and independent chemists were facing particular pressure, Julie Palmer, a partner at the law firm, said. She added that “thousands of smaller and specialist retailers struggling to stay afloat in today’s Austerity Britain”.

An industry report in January suggested that councils were killing high street shops in small towns across the country by overcharging for parking.

The research found that smaller town centres were charging more to park than larger retail locations where more people visited, which in turn meant that fewer people were going shopping.

For more information about the Telegraph’s Reinvent the High Street campaign go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/reinvent-the-high-street/